One person was killed and 6 others injured in a major Ukrainian drone attack targeting Moscow and the surrounding region on Monday night, leading to restrictions at airports in the Russian capital and changes to flight schedules, Russian officials said. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Ukraine had launched 650 drones towards the region overnight, adding that Russian air defences had shot down 105 drones near the city.
Attack toll and flight restrictions
Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov, for his part, said a Ukrainian drone attack had killed one person and injured 6 others in the area surrounding the capital. Russia's TASS news agency described the overnight attempt to target Moscow as the largest of its kind in the past two years, based on its calculations.
The agency reported that a Russian airline had changed its flight schedule after restrictions were imposed at Moscow's airports following the attack. It also quoted a source in European air traffic monitoring services as saying that 4 aircraft travelling from Turkey to Moscow had turned back because of the restrictions imposed in the Russian capital.
Russian strike closes bridge in Zaporizhzhia
In a related field development, acting governor of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Region Mykhailo Semikin said Russia had shelled a bridge over the Dnipro River in the region, injuring 2 people and bringing traffic across it to a halt. The Zaporizhzhia regional military administration announced that the targeted bridge had been temporarily closed to traffic following the Russian strike.
On the political track, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expected the United States to succeed in arranging a trilateral meeting bringing together Washington, Kyiv and Moscow during October. Zelenskyy added in a post on X that Russia was currently focusing on launching attacks against Ukraine and destabilising Europe, in his words.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin had come to know what was happening in some European countries and the statistics of attacks there better than he knew the reality of developments on the battlefield. The Ukrainian president called on the United States and its partners to “push Russia towards diplomacy and take genuine steps instead of continuing the killing”.
These developments come amid an escalation in reciprocal long-range strikes between Russia and Ukraine during the fifth year of the war, with the attacks targeting vital facilities and infrastructure linked to energy, food and communications.
